The Lorimer Legacy Read Free Page A

children. But it was not the whole truth. In the year before he died, John Junius Lorimer had contrived – by a ruse which fell only a hair’s breadth short of being criminal -to salvage one treasure from the wreck of his fortune. And that treasure was in front of Margaret now.
    Conscious of what it had done to her life, she could hardly bring herself to look at it. But how foolish it would be, she told herself, not to check its safety now that she had begun. Reluctantly she unlocked the case, raised the lid, and drew out one by one the three velvet-lined drawers.
    For a long time she knelt in front of it without moving, mesmerized by the sparkle of the gems. The centrepiece was a necklace of rubies, with a pendant in the form of a rose; its petals were formed from more rubies, set in silver and framed with tiny diamonds. In the bottom drawer nestled a pair of delicate drop ear-rings which repeated the rose motif on a miniature scale. At the top, even more richly elaborate than the necklace, lay a tiara in which yet another ruby rose was surrounded by trembling leaves of silver and diamonds. These were the objects which alone could be said to constitute the Lorimer legacy; and they had not been bequeathed to Margaret.
    Instead, John Junius Lorimer had left them to a baby whom during his lifetime he had not publicly acknowledged as his child. It was his mistress, Luisa Reni, who on her deathbed had handed them to Margaret and asked her to keep them until her little girl, Alexa, should come of age. That was the moment – nine years ago – when Margaret had first learned the name of Alexa’s father.
    Alexa herself did not yet know that she was a Lorimer by birth as well as by adoption. When Margaret accepted the responsibility for bringing up her orphaned half-sister,she needed her brother’s help. William offered them both a home at Brinsley House only on the understanding that Alexa should not be told the truth about her birth. He had laid down the condition for the sake of his father’s reputation, and Margaret had accepted it for Alexa’s. She had resolved to tell her ward the truth on the same day that the rubies were handed over – on her twenty-first birthday. Even then the taint of illegitimacy would be hard to accept.
    Like the rubies, the portrait of John Junius belonged, unsuspected, to Alexa. Poor Luisa had almost as little money in her purse as Margaret on the terrible day in 1879 when the contents of Brinsley House were auctioned for the benefit of the bank’s creditors, but she had spared what she could to make sure that Alexa would one day see what her father looked like. Fortunately, there was no one else in Bristol at that time who wished to be reminded of John Junius Lorimer, and the portrait had been knocked down to her for only a few shillings.
    Thoughtfully Margaret packed up the case and locked it away in the cupboard. As she briskly snapped the lock on the door, she snapped shut her own memory at the same time. What had happened in the past was of little importance to her life today. All that mattered now was that the legacy which John Junius Lorimer had left behind him was safe, and no one but Margaret knew of its existence.
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    Even the most unsophisticated girl knows that the simplest way to secure a young man’s company is to pretend an enthusiasm for his hobbies. Alexa had no talent for painting or carving, but she knew them to be Matthew’s passions, so she took care to prepare her watercolour box before he arrived. Carrying a picnic hamper between them, they strolled each morning through the fields until Matthew found a flower or a view of the village church to inspire him. Margaret was fully occupied with an epidemic of measles which was spreading through the village, and asked few questions about how they spent their time.
    On the last day of his visit Matthew’s concentration appeared to be disturbed. He had been drawing a foal, making a series